This is the story of Eilidh, Ben, Tom and Tom’s overland journey from Melbourne, Australia to Appin, Scotland. We drove 56,650km over 1,080.5 hours, crossed 43 countries and took 339 days, and we want to share our experience with you. Find us on facebook at facebook.com/4guysinacar .

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Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Having made the decision to ship Trevor home at the end of
the trip, we’ve spent the last couple of months waiting in anticipation for his
scheduled arrival date of the 22nd of May. Over the last few days Ben’s
been making some enquiries as to what we’d have to do to actually retrieve him,
so having emailed through copies of a few things such as our Carnet and copies
of our Bill of Lading, the next step was for Ben and I to make the trip out to
Customs House at Tullamarine to start the ball of bureaucracy rolling. We made
the trip out there this afternoon (May 21st) and after waiting at
one end of the room to have our Carnet stamped back into Australia, we took a
numbered ticket and queued up at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and
Forestry down the other end of the room. It seemed a little odd to be sent to
such a department about the shipment of a car, but apparently their services
extend to all quarantine matters. We’d come prepared with copies of our
passports (Ben’s and mine as the names on the shipping documents and Denner’s
as the named owner of the car), our original Carnet, the originals and copies
of our Bill of Lading and various unnecessary car documents such as
registration, just in case. We sat twiddling our thumbs while someone took our
documents away for a while, after which we were asked for the arrival date and
the port of entry so a quarantine inspection booking could be organised, for
which we had to pay $105. A pile of papers including our own original documents
were slid across the desk to us and we were sent on our way.

Tomorrow Ben will visit the Maersk office (the company we’ve
shipped with) to drop of our Bill of Lading which is the document issued at the
port of exit with the details of the shipment and where/whom the cargo should
be unloaded to (us). When that’s taken care of all we have to do is wait for
our quarantine inspection and unless we missed some dirt on the body of the
car, or something else that will require a hold up and of course some extra
fees, we should be free to drive off.

We found out this afternoon that the ship Trevor’s on has
already been to Perth. It’s hard to imagine that he’s actually already been to
Australia and that hopefully within a few days will be in our possession.

Thursday, 9 May 2013

Now
that we're back in Melbourne (except Denner who decided to stay in London for a
while), settling back into life as somewhat normal people, obviously there
isn't much more to report on here. The only thing still left is the arrival of
Trevor, our trusty and much-loved Toyota 4Runner who is currently on a ship
somewhere in the Indian Ocean, scheduled to arrive in Melbourne on the 22nd of
May. You can find details about the cost of this on theTrip Costspage if you're interested, which will be up-dated when he
arrives to include whatever costs we have to pay on this end, and of course any
stories about the process.

We’ve
had a lot of enquiries about whether “4 Guys in a Car: The Book” might be
written, so I’m happy to report that my project for the next while is in fact
writing it. We’ll keep everyone updated on any progress on that as it goes, but
hopefully in a few months it will be lining book shelves for everyone to enjoy.

Contact us

If anyone would like to get in touch with us about anything at all - to ask about our trip, use us as a resource if you're planning your own, share your own experiences, find out how we stay so good looking, invite us out for a beer, or anything else, we'd love to hear from you.